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INVASIVE GENETIC ELEMENTS. “Viruses represent a substantial source of genetic material assimilated by eukaryotic genomes, and the boundary between endogenous viruses and transposable elements is becoming increasingly blurry in favor of the notion of a dynamic continuum of invasive genetic elements.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X17301685 View in LinkedIn

ENORMOUS SPREAD. “The phylogeny of ERV lineages in vertebrates indicates that they have undergone more than 1000 HT events at the host family level, thus the number of HTs is likely to be extremely high at the species-level across vertebrate diversity.” (ERV= Endogenous retroviruses); (HT = horizontal gene transfer). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X17301685 View in LinkedIn

INVASIVE JUMPING GENES. “In mammalian genomes...multiple waves of ERV invasions together amount to 5–10% of nuclear genome content. A recent study identified no less than 3100 clusters of related ERV sequences in 65 vertebrate genomes, implying that thousands of independent endogenisation events occurred during vertebrate evolution.” (ERV= Endogenous retroviruses). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X17301685 View in LinkedIn

PROLIFIC SPREAD. “Much like TEs, ERVs can continue to generate copies of themselves long after their horizontal introduction, either through germline reinfections or retrotransposition events. As a result, ERVs can rapidly spread in the host population and occasionally attain high copy numbers.” (TE = transposable elements, jumping genes); (ERV= Endogenous retroviruses). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X17301685 View in LinkedIn

FAMILY OF JUMPING GENES. “Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are endogenous viral elements in the genome that closely resemble and can be derived from retroviruses. ... ERVs are a subclass of a type of gene called a transposon, which can be packaged and moved within the genome to serve a vital role in gene expression and in regulation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus View in LinkedIn

JUMPING GENE UBIQUITY. “Genome sequence mining over the past decade has revealed that such endogenous viral elements are more widespread and diverse than ever imagined, spanning every major type of virus and a wide range of host organisms and unearthing a precious fossil record of past viral infections.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X17301685 View in LinkedIn

MASSIVE AND MESSY ORIGIN. “The evidence that TEs shape eukaryotic genomes is by now incontrovertible. My thesis, then, is that TEs and the transposases they encode underlie the evolvability of higher eukaryotes' massive, messy genomes.” http://science.sciencemag.org/content/338/6108/758 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and concludes on the fascinating theme of jumping genes. They push the boundaries of what constitutes a living beastie. Their contribution to life on this planet has been enormous. But, as always, we have just scratched the surface of this story. View in LinkedIn

NEW VIEW. “I contend that it is precisely the elaboration of epigenetic mechanisms from their prokaryotic origins as suppressors of genetic exchanges that underlies both the genome expansion and the proliferation of TEs characteristic of higher eukaryotes. This is the inverse of the prevailing view that epigenetic mechanisms evolved to control the disruptive potential of TEs.” http://science.sciencemag.org/content/338/6108/758 View in LinkedIn

IMMORTAL GENES. “Birth and death is one of the characteristics of living thing, DNA appeared in the living and it is not having birth point to have death point. So, DNA is non-living because it never dies.” https://lnkd.in/dMinrW7 View in LinkedIn